Noah's exit from the Ark, building of an alter, and offering of sacrifices

Hi Everyone!

With the bulk of the holiday season now sadly past, I’m  back on the job again.  Today I pushed well into the 10th column.  After this coming shabbos I hope to complete this yeria (sheet), put in all of the taggim, clean up stray marks, and move onto the next sheet.

...and Noah drank from the wine and became drunk...

Please enjoy these photographs – this section of the Torah is concerned primarily with the events following Noah and his families exit from the ark at the end of the flood…
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You may have noticed that certain letters in the Sefer Torah script are ornamented with tiny  “crowns” like this:

The Letter "Shin" - Note the three-pronged crown on the leftmost head

The halacha (law) is that the Hebrew letters shin (ש), ayin (ע), tes (ט), nun (נ), zayin (ז), gimel (ג), tzaddi (ץ) all must be crowned with taggim.  These letters are known by the mnemonic שעטנ”ז ג”ץ ,  sha’atnez getz.  Both the basic and final forms of the nun and the tzaddi require taggim.

The source for this unique requirement is Menachos 29b:

אמר רב יהודה אמר רב: בשעה שעלה משה למרום, מצאו להקב״ה שיושב וקושר כתרים לאותיות, אמר לפניו: רבש״ע, מי מעכב על ידך? אמר לו: אדם אחד יש שעתיד להיות בסוף כמה דורות ועקיבא בן יוסף שמו, שעתיד לדרוש על כל קוץ וקוץ תילין תילין של הלכות

…

אמר רבא: שבעה אותיות צריכות שלשה זיונין, ואלו הן: שעטנ״ז ג״ץ

…

Rav Yehuda said in the name of Rav: “When Moshe ascended to the heavens he    found the Holy One, Blessed is He, sitting and binding taggim, crowns, to letters.

Moshe said before him: ‘Master of the World, who is holding you back from giving the Torah just as it is?’

He replied to Moshe: ‘There is a certain man who will exist in the future, at the end of many generations, Akiva ben Yosef  [Rabbi Akiva] is his name, who will expound mountains of halachos from each and every point…’” …

… Said Rava: “Seven letters require three ziyunin [taggim] each.  And they are: Sha’atnez Getz”

See more here…
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The Jewish holidays are here, and that means a lot of work!  I’ll be out of town until after Rosh ha-Shanna and Yom Kippur.  Please check back after Yom Kippur for more updates, videos, and articles.

Wishing everyone a sweet new year -

Avi Bloomenstiel

As I mentioned a while back in this post, Sifrei Torah written upon mashuach (coated) parchment can be rather painful to repair and maintain.

Log, whitewash, flaking off the back of a parchment sheet

Before beginning the CTC Sefer Torah, I had been contracted by a synagogue in Austin to restore/repair an antique Sefer Torah from Algiers and to have it ready in time for Rosh ha-Shanna…

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I’m back  to business again and back to my regular writing schedule of 21 to 30 lines per day.  Today I finished a good chunk of Parshas Noach.   Hopefully I will have it finished before Rosh ha-Shanna and then be well on my way to Lech-Lecha, the next section of the Torah according to the traditional division and cycle of readings.

Today's Writing... Note that the tagim, "Crowns" have not yet been put on these letters

By this point I have gotten the feel of the klaf (parchment) enough to notice that the writing was coming out exceptionally even  and well spaced.  Knowing my own writing all too well, and knowing that I didn’t trim the quill between the last section and the current one, I  suspected that something must be different with this yeria (sheet of parchment).

The Entire Section

I took out my calipers and measured the height and width of the lines, finding their measurements yielded a ratio of almost exactly 17:155 – a “golden ratio” of sorts for figuring the height/width of lines in a Torah or Megilla scroll.   For reasons that will be explained in an upcoming post, this ratio tends to generate the most evenly spaced script, fewest numbers of stretched letters, and all with the lease crowded appearance.  This ratio of this particular yeria differs from the other yerios by a mere hairs breadth, yet to the hand of a sofer, that minute discrepancy makes an amazing amount of difference.

Check in Wednesday for more videos – This time we tackle the letter gimel!